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This company was the beginning of IBM.
1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census, accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM (IBM was founded in 1911). -
The first programmable computer was the Z1
The Z1 was created by German Konrad Zuse in his parents' living room between 1936 and 1938. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, and the first really functional modern computer. -
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The Rise of Computers
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Harvard Mark 1 Computer
Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. The MARK series of computers began with the Mark I in 1944. Imagine a giant roomful of noisy, clicking metal parts, 55 feet long and 8 feet high. The 5-ton device contained almost 760,000 separate pieces. Used by the US Navy for gunnery and ballistic calculations, the Mark I was in operation until 1959. -
The first computer game invented.
It was in 1962 when a young computer programmer from MIT, Steve Russell fueled with inspiration from the writings of E. E. "Doc" Smith led the team that created the first popular computer game. Starwar was almost the first computer game ever written, however, they were at least two far-lesser known predecessors: OXO (1952) and Tennis for Two (1958).
It took the team about 200 man-hours to write the first version of Spacewar. -
The first consumer computers.
In the March, 1974, issue of QST magazine there appeared the first advertisement for a "personal computer." It was called the Scelbi (SCientific, ELectronic and BIological) and designed by the Scelbi Computer Consulting Company of Milford, Connecticut. Based on Intel's 8008 microprocessor, Scelbi sold for $565 and came with 1K of programmable memory, with an additional 15K of memory available for $2760.
